Mobile has enormous potential as an advertising channel. This isn’t exactly news. The smartphone is possibly the most lucrative marketing platform in history, given it’s potential for reach, frequency, personalization, geotargeting, social integration, and…oh yeah, transactions.
But no one seems to know quite what to do with the medium at this point. Technology vendors receive RFP’s for creative campaigns. Ad-platforms partner with boutiques for white labeled solutions. Platform providers create custom toolsets for creatives who don’t need another tool.
The disconnect stems from the platform owners presenting technical solutions to what is fundamentally a creative problem. All new mediums go through an incubation where the platform owners determine how the platform is used rather than advertisers and creative partners. But then the advertisers take control–and true creative solutions begin to take shape.
We tend to forget what banner ads looked like at the start of the medium. Banners were developed by publishers. Most creatives had no real understanding of what could be done, so publishers and ad networks tried to sell banners by making them themselves. I dare you to go to the Internet Archive to see what they looked like.
They coulda died there. But advertisers loved the potential of the medium and demand drove the development of an open infrastructure. DoubleClick and others morphed from ad networks that “made” banners to 3rd party servers capable of providing reach, scale and metrics; while flash-standards and rich-media environments allowed creatives to flex their muscles using the tools they were familiar with.
Mobile is in the process of establishing those same infrastructural ecosystems. What’s interesting is that this process isn’t really unique to digital.
Early TV “ads” were simple sponsorships and on-air mentions. But advertisers recognized the mammoth impact of the medium. That drove the innovations of the commercial break (which required the platform owners to give direct control of the airwaves to advertisers) and the development of the :30 spot. As Mad Men reminds us, agencies in the ’60s had no more technical knowledge of filming a commercial than they did of car manufacturing. Their business was based in print.
Speaking of print; go back far enough and the same pattern plays out. Early “ads” were simple “messages” advertisers purchased from publishers–who then determined the final layout, font and placement.
Mobile is in the same phase. Those of us in the creative industry aren’t in control of the medium. Its power is enormous. We just need to unlock it.
But we won’t until the platform “owners” multiple proprietary systems yield to open standards that let creatives push the boundaries. In return we all develop a more powerful platform that unlocks all the ad dollars waiting in the wings.
It’ll happen. Our clients demand it. The infrastructure is being developed. Open 3rd party ad servers are appearing. We will achieve a groundbreaking moment in mobile creative. We just don’t know what that looks like yet.
But we’ll know it when we see it.
Miles Dinsmoor is COO of Modus Operandi (www.modop.net).
